Varicose veins run in the males (seriously?)
on my mother’s side of the family.
Yes, I’ve had mine removed.
My father had a thick, wavy head of hair.
Baldness comes from the mother’s father.
I shave my head.
My grandfather had big bumps on his knuckles.
My fingers are stiff in the morning.
My older sister had bunions removed.
I have a bunionette and anticipate.
Somebody back there must have had hammer toes.
My mother had tunnel vision (literally).
I have glaucoma in my left eye.
My mother had thin skin (literally).
I have blue veins under blotchy, parchment skin.
My father had oily skin.
I have very few wrinkles on my face.
Thank the Lord for something positive.
Turkey neck. Thank you, everyone.
My mother had her faculties until she died at 92.
So…hope springs eternal in the otherwise barren
landscape of inheritance.
Kidding, kind of.

*idea from a poem by Carol Moldaw

Sludge is dumped along he river.
His eyes begin to cloud, water, weep.
Oil slicks slide down the stream.
His stomach roils in pain.
Clouds of filth fly through the air.
His skin breaks out in a rash.
The smell from the landfill swirls.
His legs feel heavy and stiff.
The farmlands belch chemicals.
His gate is altered.
Fish with lesions float upside down.
His mouth drips bloody saliva.
Rats putrefy in the sewers.
His legs falter and he stumbles.
Acid rains down on trees.
His hair falls out in clumps.
A turtle without a jaw stares.
His nostrils begin to shut.
A two-legged calf is born.
His eyelids fall off.
Sequoias crash.
(There is no one to hear.)
His eyes shrivel.
The sun can’t be seen.
His body tumbles to the ground.
The earth gurgles and burns.
His spirit departs.
A single, green sprout emerges.

Creatio Ex Nihilo?
If God was, is and ever will be,
was the creation created out
of nothing?
Or something?
For the Something
is God, Alpha and Omega,
the Was, Is and
Ever Will Be.
From the loving essence of God
creation came to be —
Creatio Ex Deo —
and that is why all
creation is forever holy —
to love and be loved
(not plundered)
for eternity.

*idea from a meditation by
Richard Rohr citing John
Philip Newell

King David was vain, arrogant, an accomplice to murder
(in fact he ordered it), so he could satisfy
the lust in his eye. He danced naked around the
ark of the covenant as celebration of the fait accompli
of establishing Jerusalem as the capital for
all Israelis.

Know anyone else in a position of power
who is vain, arrogant and always seeks to satisfy
the lust in his eye? He didn’t dance naked when
deciding that the US embassy would move to
Jerusalem, but it is rumored he danced naked
on a bed while celebrating the Golden Stream
and that wasn’t in a dream.

King David was ordained by Yahweh to lead the
people of God into battle after battle till victory
was won and the Holy Land was one.

White evangelicals believe Jesus, Son of David,
is the fulfillment of the promises of God, for
all white people will come to worship in Jerusalem.

Donald is the Wannabe King and his white
evangelical followers see that he is the Son
of David leading the children of God to battle
so that the white kingdom will be won.

King David was the one ordained by God.
King Donald is the one ordained by God.

It’s amazing to what lengths white people will
go in their xenophobic, nationalistic, homophobic,
jingoistic, misogynistic fear — to spuriously
speciously, completely erroneously link faith
history to their lunacy.

At the same time, it is kind of an ingenious
comparison, but then again even Satan quotes
scripture and Jesus, Son of David, stood strong
against that temptation and in Jesus’ all-inclusive
love, justice and mercy, all can shout,
without fear, eternal peace with elation.

I felt totally abandoned,
tumbling down a black hole
bottomlessly deep.
Then I slipped two fingers
in her panty and
fell right back to sleep.

I used to wear Dan Post cowboy boots,
some of the very best.
I used to swagger in those fine boots,
and yet.
All those cowboy boots ever gave me
was a big, old, painful bunionette.

Go on, Koan,
give us some Zen
and then we’ll pretend
we have something to go on

to solve the riddle
and become enlightened
before we skedaddle
to take a piddle.

We keep changing
the rhyme scheme —
thinking, perhaps, in rearranging,
enlightenment eternal will spring.

But alas, off to the Johnny
we must run,
but along the way
we certainly had some fun,

even though
Koan always knows
that we certainly don’t know
and enlightenment again
was a no-show.

Except we know the we is one —
duality to nonduality is the koan.
But if the we is one, then I’m
the one having all the fun.

Enlightenment is mine
and I just won
and this little piggie cried we, we, we,
No, me, me, me all the way home
without the koan
But with this silly poem.

Oops, I forgot about Johnny.

*idea for this silly poem came from a serious and excellent poem
at a poet’s blog site

The man’s grandfather died
in 1918 of the pandemic
known as the Spanish Flu.
Today, he read a poem
by a French poet
who, also, died of
the very same pandemic.
It was a beautiful poem
with a haunting refrain:
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I.
Many, many days have gone
by since the man’s grand-
father died so young — died
long before the man was born.
How much the man would
love to have heard just a word.
It would have been poetry
that he heard — from the lips
of the grandfather he never
knew.

Oh, lost love, to me come near
and let me feel your presence here;
let me know that you still care;
don’t stand so far away and stare.

I feel your judgment on my life;
it cuts to the quick as with a knife.
Is it you who judges me
or is it from my own I seek to flee?

The door shut for eternity came fast
and all the dreams perished in a flash;
I made apologies time after time,
but I wasn’t granted that one last time.

I regularly said how much I loved you,
but you were gone and my oaths — too few.

*idea from a poem by Christina Rossetti

The Good Book says that we
were to “name” all the creatures.
He doesn’t know the names
but he knows the features.

He knows a Magpie from a Mayfly
while not knowing which name goes with which.
He knows the things that crawl and those that fly
but couldn’t name them in a pinch.

He knows an oak from a cedar from a pine,
but not by name
and perhaps that is just fine
because he loves it all, just the same,
even without knowing the names.

He walks the woods and fords the streams
while singing praises to the creator
of all those glorious living things,
even though he’s a non-namer.

Though, maybe he should get a good field book
so he could, at least, name a few birds in the air
and fish in the brook.